Table_Of_Privelage

It would be the first of many naps that we've taken together over the years.

On the day of her wedding three years ago, I was taking a nap on the sofa of Auri's apartment when she came in and spooned in next to me, falling soundly asleep in my arms. When I was with Auri this past Christmas, her husband vacated his place in bed and said, "Papa, you take my place for a couple of days. She really is a daddy's girl you know!" He knows and he understands and is so beautifully unthreatened by our love.

From the time Auri was born, she's always kind of been mine. Oh yes, her mom loved her and was the most amazing mom on earth. And Auri loved her mom without conditions or hestitations. But there's always been something magical in the love we've been sharing all these years. I know that to those looking in, it might seem terribly incestuous and all. But it's not. It's just that there's so much love there and curling up in each other's arms sometimes is a wonderful way for us to express it.

When Auri was younger she always showered with me and I washed her long curly hair and combed and braided it, got her dressed and then off to school. Her mom worked full-time and my work as a photographer allowed me more time and flexibility for taking care of Auri. When her tummy hurt in the middle of the day at school, I was the one who went to pick her up and bring her home and spoon her chicken noodle soup.

As she got older she worked with me in the darkroom and tagged along for shoots when the models would be keeping their clothes on. Eventually she picked up a camera and starting doing her own work. Sometimes in the afternoon after picking her up from school, we'd take a drive up to Lake Hollywood and go for one of our fun walks around the lake. I don't remember much of what we said, but I know that one of us was always talking about something - we always had so much to share with each other.

When Auri was fifteen, my companion Les took suddenly ill with cancer and passed away in my arms at home. Sitting on the other side of him as he passed on was Auri, holding the hand of the man she called her other dad and loved and treasured as much as she did me. For a week following his death, Auri stayed by my side at our cabin in central Arizona and helped me get back on my feet. Her presence as always, was deeply and beautifully comforting.

Auri has always been my muse, both in front of the camera and away from it. Her little hand was always there in mine no matter what, no matter where. On her 22nd birthday this past August, we were walking through the Beverly Center on a shopping expedition when I felt Auri's hand reach out for mine. It was no longer that soft little hand of hers, but a woman's soft hand. And there it was in mine again. While so many things change, the joy of holding Auri's hand never will.

A year and a half ago I delivered Auri's firstborn, my grandson Tristan, in a birthing room at the UoU Medical Center where I'd delivered Auri some twenty years earlier. The midwife who assisted with Auri's birth was once again at my side to assist with Tristan's delivery. Standing by my side too was Auri's mother, the woman I'd shared eleven years of my life with and had been divorced from for eleven years. Moments after handing Tristan up to Auri, I turned to this woman I'd once loved so much and we fell into each other's arms crying - the joy and relief of the moment washing away any differences we'd ever had.

For 22 years now I've been sharing my life with this precious young woman I call Auri. I've been her daddy, her papa, her friend and her confidante and have created in concert with her, a richly meaningful relationship that at its core is loving and pure. Her mother and I had a good marriage - loving, playful and full of adventure from beginning to end. When our differences became irreconcilable, we chose to end the marriage as so many people do when it becomes apparent that Humpty Dumpty can't be put back together again. We did it quietly and amicably with an inviolable committment to protect our daughter from the pain that divorces often put kids through.

Today, Auri is in her final semester of school and will graduate in June with a degree in science and nursing. In addition to being a wife and mom, she works full-time in the neonatal unit at LDS Hospital in Salt Lake. She's loved and adored by virtually everyone who meets her and is in every way imaginable, an extraordinary human being. Did her mother and I have anything to do with the beautiful young woman she's become? Who knows. But we did our best to give her a safe and loving start in life - one that seems to have served her well.

When it comes to forging familial ties that bind and nurture, I seem to have the same capacity for doing that that everyone else has. Who I love has become such an issue that it's overriding how I love and pulled the attention away from the real locus of what it means to be a caring father and companion.

Mormonism, deeply ingrained in me from birth, tried to convince me that who I was rendered me incapable of creating and sustaining the kind of relationships that heterosexual people often do so beautifully. My marriage, though brief by some standards, my exquisite daughter and my life overall, have proved mormonism wrong on all counts.

Somehow we seem to have gotten lost in a debate that goes round and round and never let's us get out of the harbor and out into open waters. We're stuck with old thoughts and old perceptions and old religious traditions that are weighing us down and holding us back. We're tied to the dock - but this is a ship that longs to set sail.

As a kid growing up in Italy, my folks always insisted that our maids eat with us at the main table instead of in the kitchen. At dinner one night after having returned from being a guest at a friend's house for a few days, I turned to our maid and said, "Why don't you eat in the kitchen like all of the other maids do?"

The hand that came barreling across my face knocked the food from my mouth and me onto the floor and from there I was dragged by the scruff of my neck to the kitchen where I sat in shame for the rest of the evening, sobbing my pitiful little heart out. Emilia may have been our maid and she may have been uncomely and uneducated and oh so different than us privelaged Americans. But there was always a place for her at the main table with our family.

I guess all these years later, one of the things I find myself wanting more than just about anything else, is to sit at the main table in the dining room with everyone else instead of in the kitchen. Isn't Auri kind of proof enough that I'd make a good dinner guest at the table of privelage?

Sometimes, (not in a place of self-pity but just plain old curiosity) I wonder what more it is I have to do to prove my worth. The one thing that seems to stand between me and sitting at the table of privelage, is the one thing I can't make happen. I tried, but it didn't work. Will I be OK if things don't swing my way? Oh sure, I've always been OK and will breathe my last having lived a life that's rich beyond my ability to describe. I just find myself sitting here sometimes wishing that people could see into my heart better and know what it is that's there, thinking that maybe if they did, they wouldn't be so reluctant to invite me to dine with them and feast on the same sumptuous banquet of dreams that they're feasting on.

So rather than whining and complaining, I'm letting you in. I'm sharing the stories of my life with very little held back, with the hope that ultimately it'll make a difference. It's at least worth a shot.

Tom Clark

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